


One Good Thing

by i_am_a_mole_and_i_live_in_a_hole



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angsty Schmoop, Bullying, Caretaking, Descriptions of Injury, Descriptions of mental illness, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Platonic Cuddling, Possibly Pre-Slash, Protective Thor, potential self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:58:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_a_mole_and_i_live_in_a_hole/pseuds/i_am_a_mole_and_i_live_in_a_hole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor didn't ask to be the one guy with a crazy brother in their rural Nebraska town, but he'll find some way to manage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Good Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Though I based certain individual symptoms shown in this story off of some actual symptoms of mental illness, this is absolutely NOT intended to be a realistic depiction of the mental health issue in question. I cannot stress this enough.
> 
> Written as an exercise in Thor-writing. I'm not sure I really got it, but... well, I'm trying. Bleh.

          It was a sweltering day in Falls City, Nebraska, when Thor beat the hell out of two boys who worked at the slaughterhouse down the road after catching them tormenting his little brother. They were behind the old textile mill on Evans Road between the Borsons’ house and the town’s one high school, in the middle of the route Thor’s mad younger brother liked to take when he went for his long, solitary walks. They must have caught him there, Thor deduced; found him and pulled him off the road, or found him wandering off of it, and then started in.

          They would regret it now.

          “I’ll kill your ass,” Thor spat as he ground the older, larger one’s face into the dust. “Think you can fuck with Loki? I’ll kill you. Piece of shit.” He took hold of the sand-colored hair and lifted the guy’s head up before slamming him face first into the ground again, feeling a dark twinge of satisfaction at pained yelp, the sound of breaking nasal cartilage. Then he got up off the guy’s back, shooting a glare of contempt at the younger one, who was clinging to a broken wooden fencepost several feet away, favoring a twisted ankle.

          “Hey, man, you didn’t have to—”

          “Shut it.” Thor’s lip curled. “You ever talk to him again, I’ll kill you. Come on, Loki.”

*

          Walking home took longer than it ought to. His little brother hovered silently beside his shoulder most of the way, so close that every few steps Thor could feel the brush of Loki’s long sleeves against his own bare, dusty arm. His breath was soft and quick and  _audible,_  his hands held in front of him, twisting invisible patterns into the air. Occasionally he would pause, holding one hand out and tapping two fingers of the other against his upturned, exposed wrist—for what purpose, Thor knew not, but that gesture came more and more frequently as they came closer to home, and then suddenly Loki’s breath hitched and he began to sob.

          “Loki, man, what’s wrong?”

          “My bones are dissolving.” Thor turned, and Loki collapsed against his chest, wrapping thin arms around his neck and crying, his body a loose, dead weight as Thor curled his arms around his little brother’s torso to support him.

          “Your bones ain’t dissolving, man, they’re right here.” Thor gave Loki’s shoulder a firm squeeze for emphasis.

          Loki’s mouth had fallen open, the corners of his lips pulled back in a grimace as he stared right past Thor’s face into the distance and made a loud, extended groan. “Aaaaaa-a-a. I’m dying.”

          “You ain’t dying.” Thor braced his back, bent his knees, and hoisted Loki over his shoulder. The motion was made more difficult by the slackness in Loki’s muscles, but it wasn’t too hard—his little brother was skinny and light as a wisp. Their grandmother was always complaining that he was too thin and needed to eat more; Thor had given up pointing out to her that Loki  _hated_  to eat. He would sneak the mashed potatoes and any form of meat to the dog or into the potted plants, leaving only small quantities of carrots and broccoli and sometimes radishes because, as he stated in his more lucid moments, “Beta-carotene and niacin have a neutralizing effect on poisons, Thor. The NSA is putting their twisty-ties in your head. They left the casserole dish in the sink, in the sink, that’s why I don’t want to use the sink, the sink.”

          Loki sniffled into Thor’s lower back the rest of the way home, fisting his hands in Thor’s shirt and twisting it tight around his stomach. When Thor passed the mailbox he felt Loki’s shallow breaths increase in speed, and a moment later felt his younger brother drag a fistful of his t-shirt to his mouth, chewing on it and crying.

          The ancient red Volvo station wagon was gone from the driveway, which meant that their parents were still in town and probably would remain so overnight. Thor fumbled with the doorknob on the porch of the farmhouse for a moment, shifting his weight so that the mass of Loki’s body was closer to his own center of gravity, and then pushed the door open. He carried his little brother to the living room and deposited him on the faded mustard-yellow couch in front of the television. Loki reached up for him, his body held stiff at the end of the couch, hands bent at ninety-degree angles to his forearms, but Thor shook his head, straightening his stretched and dampened shirt.

          “Gotta check on the cows first, Lokes, man.”

          He received no answer. Instead Loki just stared into the distance, his convulsively blinking eyes focused on a point somewhere above the bunny ears on the television. He was making exaggerated movements with his jaw, as if trying to chew a bite of something too large for his mouth, and he had begun to tap his wrists again.

          “All’ight.” Thor twisted his own hands together—was he picking up nervous habits from Loki? “I’ll be right back soon. Don’t go a-running.”

*

          Thor had only been to the city once in his life, when his mother had driven him and Loki all the way into Omaha so that Loki could visit a psychiatrist. Never before had he seen something so…  _big,_  so modern, all electric lights and gleaming metal surfaces. By comparison, his hometown seemed hopelessly shabby and faded. The slaughterhouse and the asparagus canning factory were by far the largest buildings around, and neither had seen the attention of any loving architect, flat whitewashed concrete and sheet metal expanses with streaks of dirt and rust-colored sediment running up their sides and down from the gutters. Though he and his father did their best to keep up with the repairs, the Borsons’ house wasn’t much better, the wood paneling on the farmhouse warped and dilapidated, the remains of what had once been green paint peeling from the trimming where Thor’s dad couldn’t reach and Thor himself hadn’t had time to get around to painting.

           _Maybe,_  Thor plotted as he walked towards the shed, his shoes scuffing up clouds of dust with every step,  _maybe, if I get my diploma, we can move to Omaha._  It was a pipe dream, one born of the quiet despair that dogged the footsteps of youth in a small town with little education and few prospects, but one he loved regardless with a young mother’s intensity.

          “Think ya could really be somethin’, boy,” his father, whom he worshipped, had said. “Your mama an’ me, we only came here cos we had nothin’. An’ I ain’t thinkin’ we done too badly from where we star-ted. But  _you_ , boy—yer strong, stronger’n your papa an’ smarter too. Don’t stay here, boy. You get yerself outta here. Go be somethin’.” He grinned and prodded Thor in the shoulder. “Maybe one day yer mama and me’ll turn on the tee-vee and see ya on there, gettin’ all a-bove yer raisin’.”

          Thor beamed. “Thinkin’ so, dad?”

          “Ya know I wouldn’t bullshit ya, son.”

          But of course, leaving their decaying, dead-end town was easier said than done.

          Thor sighed. Maybe they would have to do so regardless. He knew they weren’t doing well, the grazing pastures growing sparse, necessitating the use of supplementary hay even in the height of summer. His father was probably going to want to talk to him about that if things didn’t pick up soon. And if he  _didn’t…_  well, Thor would probably have to bring it up himself. Their profit margins were already slim enough—they couldn’t afford to have bad grazing keep cutting into them even more.

          He opened the shed and grabbed the keys to the old rusty white all-wheel pickup, driving it out across the fields to the hay-drops nearest the house to fork up the remnants of the bales into the box. He stopped by the compost pile on his way back to drop off the excess, and saw that Stephen the farmhand had already been by on his rounds of the other drops. The man really was a godsend. Thor didn’t know what they would do if they had to let him go.

          The heat was still hanging like a thick woolen blanket when he finished, choking the sad spiked bushes and the pathetic stands of scrub-grass, whose blades hung motionless in the air without the hint of a breeze to make them move. Thor chucked the pitchfork into the bed of the truck and stopped to take a drink of water, then dumped the rest over his head. Sweat had soaked through his t-shirt in the back and under the arms and in a large V down the front, and was dripping from the ends of the long hair that his mother was always on him about cutting. His mother wasn’t there, though, so he pulled his shirt off over his head and used it to scrub at his face and his hair before hopping back in the cabin and gunning the engine for home.

*

          Loki was making noises in the living room when Thor walked through the door, still stripped to the waist, discarded shirt bunched up in a ball between his fingers. He could hear little groans of “aaaaaa” and “oh, no, oh, no,” interspersed with complete sentences that were intonated like a newscaster’s, devoid of the groans’ anxiety: “Why, I don’t believe that he’s actually done it! This is really one for the century. The NSA, the, the, the NSA, they’ve really outdone themselves this time. Marissa’s got the hogs all up in the tea-trays over there; she’s really doing—really doing—”

          “Hey, Loki, man?” Thor called, walking around the kitchen towards the living room, “Are you oka—”

          Then he saw the blood.

           _“Loki!”_

          His little brother jerked, ducking his head, shoulders turning inwards. “Oh no, oh no, oh no. He’s mad, Thor. He doesn’t like it when you do that. Call your mother, Annabelle. She called and said, she says she’s mad at you. They came and put the pins in the clock tower—says they—they don’t want you to come home anymore—”

          Loki had hunkered in on himself on the floor where he’d moved to sit, blood-slicked fingers held stiffly in front of him. There was a shattered blue glass lamp on the floor, its cord dragging several feet from where it had been plugged in as though someone had pulled it away from its end table—with force. “Loki, Loki, man, what’d you do?” Thor knelt in front of him, tugging at his arms, which resisted being moved, but Thor was firm—turning Loki’s palms face-up, checking the pale wrists for cuts that would demand a 911 call. There were none— _thank you, Jesus_. Loki’s head was down, his face turned away, but he did not flinch or cry or jerk away when his hands were touched—yet, as Thor realized within moments, uncurling the rigid, uncooperative fingers with dawning alarm, his fingers and palms had been cut to mincemeat.

          “They said he wasn’t coming back.” His little brother’s voice had gone unnaturally flat, his face expressionless, though he was still curled in on himself and looking away. The blinking tic had come back, extreme enough in its expression that it appeared as though Loki was trying to get something out of his eyes. “They called him out and he got stuck in the well. The mud s-s-s-sucks you in and takes the calcium out of your bones. You can’t talk if you have rocks in your mouth.”

          “Jesus H. Christ.” Thor needed tweezers and paper towels and bandages and antiseptic if he was going to take care of this, but he was reluctant to leave Loki alone in this state. Luckily, his little brother did not fight being pulled to his feet by his elbows and led down the hallway to the bathroom, where Thor sat him on the counter as he began to slowly pull broken glass from the cuts. It  _had_ to hurt—he didn’t see how it couldn’t—but Loki showed no pained reactions at all, submitting to Thor’s ministrations without complaint and letting his feet tap against the cabinets.

          “She said, they said, they don’t want you to come back home anymore. But I found a nice casserole recipe on the inter-net that takes French onions. My brother likes onions. I miss my brother.”

          “I’m right here, Lokes,” Thor told him, not knowing if he was listening but talking anyway. He did his best to be as gentle as he could be with large, undexterous hands roughened by years on a farm, despite his little brother’s seeming lack of hurt. Dabbing away the blood and going for the largest cuts first, he frowned in concentration as he withdrew a long glass shard from where it had been buried deep within the fleshy part of Loki’s palm, near the base of his thumb. Fresh blood welled up from the wound as he pulled the sliver away, bright red droplets trickling down the inside of Loki’s forearm, and Thor dabbed at the injury with an antiseptic-soaked paper towel.

          Loki clicked his tongue, tilting his head to the side to study his own hands and Thor’s as his brother worked. “There’s a song I know.  _Tell him to make me a cambric shirt, without no seams nor needlework._ ”

          “Mom used to sing that to us.”

           _“No,”_  Loki replied. “She’s not who I’m talking about.”

          Thor blinked in surprise and looked up, tweezers hovering over another cut. “Loki?”

          But his brother was staring off into the distance when he looked, his brows drawn faintly together, his expression troubled, and didn’t say another word.

         He got like that sometimes. Thor found himself putting down the tweezers and squeezing Loki’s shoulder, and then on impulse pulled him into a tight hug. The embrace was not returned, but nor did Loki go rigid and uncooperative, which Thor interpreted—he hoped correctly—as his little brother not minding. Then Loki’s head tipped to rest against Thor’s shoulder, and Thor—well, Thor was  _almost_  certain he was right that his little brother didn’t mind.

          He felt something, a choking lump, catch in his throat.

          “I ain’t going anywhere. You know that, right?” He whispered into the soft, dark hair. “No matter what happens, Loki. We ain’t leaving you. I ain’t going nowhere.”

          There was a quiet breath, a gentle, warm exhalation against his shoulder. A long sigh. And then—wonder of all heavenly wonders—he felt slender fingers come up to squeeze his shoulder.

          Something twisted deep inside his chest, and Thor…

          There might have been a few tears.

*

          As had been expected, their parents did not come home. Their mother did call and leave a message on their answering machine, however, letting the boys know that they would be alone until the next day.

          Later that night, within a few minutes of Thor plunking himself down on the patchy old mustard-colored couch and turning on the television, Loki scooted up of his own accord and cuddled up against Thor’s side, resting the side of his face against his brother’s shoulder. His bandaged hands had been cradled against his chest, but Thor felt them come to rest against his own front, tucked under Loki’s chin. He curled one arm around Loki’s shoulders, hugging him close.

          Outside it had begun to rain, first a slow and steady  _pat pat pat_  on the roof which progressed to the uneven wash of static that was the sound of a heavy rainstorm. Thunder resonated in the distance, its rumbling lethargic. A news ribbon crawled across the bottom of the television screen giving alert of a tornado watch. Thor paid it no attention; the clouds hadn’t looked menacing, and watches were sent out  _every_  time a storm hit.

          Loki shifted beneath his arm, and Thor glanced down. His brother hadn’t spoken since his strange words earlier that evening, and it didn’t seem like he was about to start again; instead, Loki had picked his head up, and was staring at something in the empty corner of the room with narrow-eyed intensity.

          “Loki? You okay?”

          As Thor had come to expect, he got no answer.

          “C’mon, Lokes, there’s nothing there.”

          He gave Loki’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, trying to urge him to look away, to turn back. For a moment Loki was stiffly un-dissuadable, his body held rigid, what was visible of his knuckles white between the bandages; but then he uttered a soft, shuddering sigh and squeezed his eyes shut, jerking his head away and burying his face against Thor’s chest, hands fisting in his shirt. Loki’s breath was shallow and uneven, his ribcage heaving as if with sobs, though he seemed not to be crying. Thor hugged him tight, rubbing his back in careful circles.

          “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

          “Kill your ass,” Loki gritted out suddenly, his hands trembling. “Kill you.”

          “Sh, sh, it’s okay.”

          Thor didn’t fancy himself much good at comfort, but he kept repeating those words.  _It’s okay. You’re okay._ Loki’s grip on him was so strong it hurt, but he made no move to disentangle himself, instead echoing again and again:  _Sh, it’s okay._

           _You’re okay._

          At long last, Loki’s breathing slowed, and his grip began to slacken. But he jerked hard in alarm at the first hint of Thor making an attempt to shift, so Thor decided to ignore the stiffness in his muscles, staying put. He held the slight form of his younger brother close, there on that worn yellow couch in their family’s dilapidated farmhouse, surrounded by stained, creaky walls covered in ugly fading yellow-and-green striped wallpaper as the thunderstorm raged overhead.

          Minutes stretched on, and on, until finally, Loki was the one who shifted. Something fell out of his pocket as he did so, though Loki himself didn’t seem to notice. Thor glanced down at it out of instinct—and something inside him jolted in realization.

          It was an envelope; with the words  _For Thor_  written on the front in Loki’s characteristic, looping script. That, however, was not what gave Thor pause. The envelope had not been sealed—and poking out the top was something that he instantly recognized.

          It was  _one,_  single, one-way bus ticket to Omaha.

           _No._

          Thor’s grip on his brother grew abruptly fierce.

           _No, Loki. That ain’t the way I want to leave. That ain’t the kind of gift I ever want you to give me._

          He wondered if he should say something. He looked down at the dark head pillowed against his shoulder; the slight frame snuggled so close. His little brother had huddled up against him, legs folded on the couch cushions. For the moment, at least, he seemed better. Maybe Thor didn’t need to say anything again—but it couldn’t hurt. He noticed that somewhere up above them, the rain had stopped, as had all signs of the thunder. The little farmhouse hung suspended in the silence. Such quiet could herald the end of the storm—or the coming of a tornado. And who knew which one it might be.

          “Not goin' anywhere without you, Loki. Not now. Not ever.”

          His little brother made a soft noise, and snuggled closer.

          Thor hugged him tight, and wished with all his heart that it would last.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as mari-the-mole or happygutters (nsfw).
> 
> Falls City is a real place, but besides the name, the town in this story is not intended to bear any similarity to the original.
> 
> Scarborough Fair, the song Loki references, instructs the listener to perform a series of impossible tasks in order to win the singer's heart. 
> 
> The repetitive movement tics Loki exhibits are intended to be symptomatic of tardive dyskinesia, a disorder which results from extended use of antipsychotics. But, again, this is not intended to be a realistic depiction of mental illness overall. For more of a realistic fictional depiction of living with a sibling who has this type of mental illness, you might consider reading Betty Hyland's "The Girl With the Crazy Brother".


End file.
